


Joy and Gladness

by AlexElizabeth



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:02:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28185108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexElizabeth/pseuds/AlexElizabeth
Summary: Fluff; Christmas at Denver.
Relationships: Harriet Vane/Peter Wimsey
Comments: 11
Kudos: 78
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Joy and Gladness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bodldops](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bodldops/gifts).



“Peter,” said his lady.

“Hmm,” said her lord.

The fire cracked and sighed. Harriet stretched, burrowed deeper in her armchair beside the grate, and then, with a regretful glance at the clock, removed herself from the chair.

Peter rose as well, uncoiling himself from the sofa.

The blue parlor at Denver was cast in shadow, the firelight dancing over the flotsam and jetsam of a game of charades and twinkling on decanters and abandoned snifters. The guests and their host and hostess had long since departed for bed. Harriet had stayed, sleepy but not uncontented, to stare into the fire as her husband poured a last drink. Peter had stayed, nursing his drink, because his wife was watching the fire and Peter derived a childlike pleasure from watching Harriet watch the fire.

“Did you have a nice Christmas?” Peter inquired as Harriet turned to him.

“Yes, I think so,” she said, considering.

“Christmas at Denver,” he observed, “is an acquired taste. I thought it might have been a bit much.”

“Well, I can’t say I mind the Christmases we haven’t come down, but it doesn’t hurt to put in a showing. Would you rather we had stayed in Town this year?”

“Truthfully, yes, but I’m glad you were willing to come. It mattered to Gerald to have us here. Mary, too, for that matter. She pretends she doesn’t care, but the children are getting older and family seems to matter a bit more to her. Not in a blue-blooded way, but hearth and home, I suppose.”

“You’re one to talk,” her ladyship retorted, amused. “With two young sons asleep in the nursery upstairs.”

“Hush! Bunter likes to pretend I’m still a bachelor. The children are seemly but best kept out of sight until they’re a little older.”

“Nonsense. Bunter dotes on them. He feels you and I are much too strict. Practically puritanical in our parenting.”

“ _Ma chère femme!_ You were not at all puritanical last night.”

“Is it awful manners to make love to one’s wife under another man’s roof?”

“Not if it’s a family roof. We have as much right as anyone else. I should think Gerald would blow the trumpets from the parapets if he knew. He was so terribly afraid for the succession for so long. Jerry apparently doesn’t inspire much confidence…Gerald never mentioned it outright, but I know he felt I was letting down the side rather badly. Here I am, second son, fit and healthy and all the rest, clearly of a vigorous disposition and not averse to the ladies. And what do I do but embrace a monastic lifestyle, declaring I’ll have my chosen lady or none at all. Absolutely no regard for duty. No thought for the family crest and carrying on the line.”

“Have we redeemed ourselves?” Harriet inquired. “I mean, we’ve produced two male heirs. No girl-children at all.”

“I should have liked to produce a nursery full of girls just to spite Gerald. But yes, I think we have redeemed ourselves, single-minded man that he is.”

“Producing only girls would have been amusing,” Harriet agreed, “but I can’t say I have any regrets. Bredon and Roger are rather splendid.”

“So they are. Never think I meant otherwise. Only it gives one pause, doesn’t it? I’ve gone from the carefree man-about-town to a staid family man.”

“I don’t know that anyone would call you _staid_ , Peter,” said Harriet, rather amused.

“Oh, well!” he said, on a fretful note.

“Come here, dearest.”

He came to her, and a silence fell.

“Speaking of progeny,” Harriet said after a few long moments. 

“Mmmmm,” Peter said. “Don’t speak. Carry on with what you were doing.”

“All right.”

After another pause, Harriet persisted.

“But I say, Peter. Perhaps Christmas night isn’t the best time to raise the subject. But I was thinking just now. I’ve just signed a contract for three more novels, the first due in March.”

“I am aware. Don’t tell me you think you need my permission to sign a contract or anything like that. Your work is strictly your business, between you and your agent.”

“Certainly. Besides, the contract is signed, so it’s too late to protest.”

“Very well. Is it worrying you?”

“No, only I expect we’ll both be awfully busy next year. I’ll be writing, and you’ll be beholden to the Foreign Office for as long as they need you.”

He pulled away, his face troubled. “I can’t see how I can get out of that.”

“No more should you. But from a purely logistical standpoint, if one wants to have a conversation, I think it’s best to talk when one has the chance rather than waiting for a more opportune moment and then to find you called away at a moment’s notice. There are some things,” Harriet said, “I would rather not have to write out in a letter.”

“My dear, what are you saying?”

“Well, you’ve just been complaining about your role as a family man, so I don’t know how you’ll take this. You did tell me,” Harriet went on doggedly, “before we were married, and you never took it back, that you would leave this business all up to me. I hope you haven’t changed your mind and are now prepared to assert your opinion first, because from what I can see, the deed is done.”

“You’re talking just like my mother,” Peter said, his voice light, but his eyes had sparked. “I say, Harriet, are telling me to prepare myself—?”

“It’s a bit early to say definitively, but I hate keeping secrets.”

“How early?”

“About two months, I should say.”

“That’s why you’ve had no appetite. And I, the great detective, didn't even suspect.” He looked so genuinely shocked at his lapse that she hurried to console him.

“You've been away a great deal of this time." She chuckled. "Yesterday you asked if I'd gone off my feed because I detested Helen’s company.”

“My dear!” He caught her to him, his arms tightening as she pressed her cheek to his.

“You needn’t pretend to be happy if you don’t feel it, Peter,” Harriet said. “ _I’m_ happy, which is ridiculous because it’s terrible timing.” Her mind darted back, inconsequentially, to the first days of their marriage. _Pour le rendre heureux, vous n’avez qu’à être heureuse_...would old Paul Delagarie’s advice hold up this many years later? She continued, determined to get it out. “I daresay you’ll be out of communication for most of next year, and I’ve seen firsthand how roundabout the Foreign Office is with letters and telegrams. You’ll probably worry, although I hope you won’t. I’ll be working on my manuscripts like fury and probably sick half the time if it’s anything like I was with Bredon and Roger. But I am happy. I _like_ our children,” she ended on a note of faint belligerence. “I can’t be sorry for a third.”

“Sorry for a third? No, rather the opposite.” He pulled back so he could look at her face, and in the dim light of the fire she saw the boyish grin. Her heart lifted. “Harriet, look what you’ve done to me. I don’t deserve any of this. I feel like Zacharias. I am an old man...although _you’re_ not stricken in years by any means. No, don’t worry, I shan’t protest my belief—I couldn’t cope with being struck mute—only it’s rather astonishing to have so many good things go on happening to us, when so many horrid things are happening in the world in general. Thou shalt have joy and gladness…five or ten years ago, I wouldn’t have believed any of this if you’d told me of it.”

She took his face into her hands and answered his smile. “Well, then that’s all right.”

“Yes. All is well, and all is well, and all manner of things are well.”

“On that, shall we go to bed?”

“Come, my queen, take hands with me.”

Harriet took his hand and together, they climbed the stairs to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> References
> 
> “I am an old man,” “stricken in years,” and “thou shalt have joy and gladness” – King James Bible, Luke chapter 1
> 
> “All is well…” – misquotation, Lady Julian of Norwich
> 
> “Come, my queen, take hands with me” – Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_
> 
> Author's Note
> 
> The prompt was for fluff, and I hope I have delivered. If there is, in the Dowager Duchess's words, a shocking victory of sentiment over principal in the story – with no plot to speak of and the jumble of quotations tossed in at the end – I have no excuse except that it is Christmastime. It is short but at least a little fluffy, and I hope you enjoy. Happy Yuletide!


End file.
